scholarly journals The Problem of Paternal Motives

Utilitas ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 446-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS MILLS
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
Recent Argument

In this article I assess the ability of motivational accounts of paternalism to respond to a particular challenge: can its proponents adequately explain the source of the distinctive form of disrespect that animates this view? In particular I examine the recent argument put forward by Jonathan Quong that we can explain the presumptive wrong of paternalism by relying on a Rawlsian account of moral status. I challenge the plausibility of Quong's argument, claiming that although this approach can provide a clear response to the explanatory challenge, it is only successful in doing so when it relies on the strength of its rival: the argument from personal autonomy. In doing so I illustrate that such responses are conceptually dependent on an account of respect for persons, and thus much of the relevant controversy is actually disagreement over how we respect other individuals.

scholarly journals Bioethical Principals In The Conduct Of Doctors

10.3823/2529 ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilza Teresinha Ambrós Ribeiro ◽  
José Hiran Gallo ◽  
Guilhermina Rêgo
Keyword(s):  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Healthcare Setting ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Medical Doctors ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
Review Of The Literature ◽  
Continuous Training ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Close Relationship

Objective: The present study aims gather further information towards the practice of medicine, particularly regarding bioethical principles, which are essential for the full and correct medical practice all over the world. Method: This study is a theoretical essay on the bioethical principles related to the professional activity of medical doctors. Therefore, it was carried out a non-systematic review of the literature, which allows a critical analysis of this issue. Results: Through considering the theoretical guidelines there is a close relationship between the principle of respect for persons and human dignity itself. Also the results of this study suggest that respect for persons, namely personal autonomy, is steadily protected by means of constitutional and infra-constitutional norms. Conclusion: For these principles to be effective it is indispensable to have common efforts between the political power and overall society, so that public policies may be implemented to favor patients in the healthcare setting. Also the continuous training of physicians is needed for an adequate application of universal bioethical principles.

Moral Grounding for the Participation of Children as Organ Donors

1993 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lainie Friedman Ross
Keyword(s):  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
Organ Donor ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Organ Donors ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
The Public ◽  
Family Autonomy ◽  
Moral Grounding

More than 24,000 patients await organ transplants and the number is increasing yearly. Living donors are an important source of transplant organs. In this paper, I argue that we can morally justify allowing children to serve as donors. Yet, I also argue that their participation must be restricted in order to prevent their exploitation.The paper is divided into six sections. In the first section, I show why the traditional principles of personal autonomy and beneficence are not adequate morally to justify the participation of children in the nontherapeutic role of organ donor. Next, I argue that the moral justification of the child’s participation must be based on the intimate family relationship which permits activities that would be unacceptable in the public domain. In the third section, I argue that family autonomy ought to be limited by the principle of respect for persons. In the fourth section, I propose five principles to guide the participation of children as organ donors. In section five, I discuss the role of the child in the decision-making process. In section six, I critically examine the criteria for equity in donor selection.

Moral Conscientiousness and the Subjectivism/Objectivism Debate about Moral Wrongness

2021 ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Peter A. Graham
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Choice Situation ◽  
Recent Argument ◽  
Moral Wrongness

The Subjectivism/Objectivism debate is a debate about the facts the an action’s moral status is grounded in. Subjectivists maintain that an action’s moral status is grounded in the subjective circumstances of the agent at the time of its performance. Objectivists deny this. This chapter defends the Objectivist view against a recent argument against it by championing a picture of moral conscientiousness which is at odds with a central premise of that argument. The picture of moral conscientiousness defended is one that crucially sees the morally conscientious person’s concern not to act wrongly as degreed and sensitive to the degrees of wrongness of the options facing the morally conscientious agent. After motivating this particular conception of moral conscientiousness and defending Objectivism against the argument against it, the chapter further develops the Objectivist picture of the moral status of actions and explains the Objectivist’s conception of the relation between moral wrongness and what a morally conscientious person ought to do in her choice situation.

scholarly journals SELF-OWNERSHIP AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMAN BODY

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-115
Author(s):  
Ian Carter
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Respect For Persons ◽  
Fundamental Notion ◽  
Biological Organism ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
The Right

Abstract:In this essay I attempt to vindicate the “asymmetry thesis,” according to which ownership of one’s own body is intrinsically different from ownership of other objects, and the view that self-ownership, as libertarians normally understand the concept, enjoys a special “fact-insensitive” status as a fundamental right. In particular, I argue in favor of the following claims. First, the right of self-ownership is most plausibly understood as based on the more fundamental notion of respect for persons, where the concept of a person is in turn understood, along the lines set out by P. F. Strawson and P. M. S. Hacker, as referring to an entire biological organism with a certain set of mental and corporeal characteristics. If we restrict our attention to human persons, we can say on this basis that there is a special moral status attaching to the entire human body, and to no more than the human body. Second, self-ownership is not, as critics have sometimes supposed, based on a more fundamental right to equal freedom or autonomy. Criticisms of self-ownership as insufficiently justified on the basis of such rights are therefore off target. Rather, equal freedom and self-ownership are each based directly on the more fundamental notion of respect for persons. For left-libertarians, the asymmetry thesis serves to give priority to self-ownership when delineating a set of original property rights, given that there are many alternative ways of realizing equal freedom not all of which involve fully respecting people’s property rights in themselves.

Christus Virgo

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-27
Author(s):  
Sissel Undheim
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The description of Christ as a virgin, 'Christus virgo', does occur at rare occasions in Early Christian and late antique texts. Considering that 'virgo' was a term that most commonly described the sexual and moral status of a member of the female sex, such representations of Christ as a virgin may exemplify some of the complex negotiations over gender, salvation, sanctity and Christology that we find in the writings of the Church fathers. The article provides some suggestions as to how we can understand the notion of the virgin Christ within the context of early Christian and late antique theological debates on the one hand, and in light of the growing interest in sacred virginity on the other.

On the Moral Status of Disgust

2018 ◽  
Vol 122 ◽  
pp. 51-84
Author(s):  
Dayk Jang ◽  
Min-seop Lee
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status

Our Bodies, Whose Property?

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Labor Markets ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Right

No one wants to be treated like an object, regarded as an item of property, or put up for sale. Yet many people frame personal autonomy in terms of self-ownership, representing themselves as property owners with the right to do as they wish with their bodies. Others do not use the language of property, but are similarly insistent on the rights of free individuals to decide for themselves whether to engage in commercial transactions for sex, reproduction, or organ sales. Drawing on analyses of rape, surrogacy, and markets in human organs, this book challenges notions of freedom based on ownership of our bodies and argues against the normalization of markets in bodily services and parts. The book explores the risks associated with metaphors of property and the reasons why the commodification of the body remains problematic. The book asks what is wrong with thinking of oneself as the owner of one's body? What is wrong with making our bodies available for rent or sale? What, if anything, is the difference between markets in sex, reproduction, or human body parts, and the other markets we commonly applaud? The book contends that body markets occupy the outer edges of a continuum that is, in some way, a feature of all labor markets. But it also emphasizes that we all have bodies, and considers the implications of this otherwise banal fact for equality. Bodies remind us of shared vulnerability, alerting us to the common experience of living as embodied beings in the same world. Examining the complex issue of body exceptionalism, the book demonstrates that treating the body as property makes human equality harder to comprehend.

Utopias of One

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Kotin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War I ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Original Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

This book is a new account of utopian writing. It examines how eight writers—Henry David Thoreau, W. E. B. Du Bois, Osip and Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Anna Akhmatova, Wallace Stevens, Ezra Pound, and J. H. Prynne—construct utopias of one within and against modernity's two large-scale attempts to harmonize individual and collective interests: liberalism and communism. The book begins in the United States between the buildup to the Civil War and the end of Jim Crow; continues in the Soviet Union between Stalinism and the late Soviet period; and concludes in England and the United States between World War I and the end of the Cold War. In this way it captures how writers from disparate geopolitical contexts resist state and normative power to construct perfect worlds—for themselves alone. The book contributes to debates about literature and politics, presenting innovative arguments about aesthetic difficulty, personal autonomy, and complicity and dissent. It models a new approach to transnational and comparative scholarship, combining original research in English and Russian to illuminate more than a century and a half of literary and political history.

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